The 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is a measure of overall progress towards environmental sustainability, developed
for 146 countries. The index provides a composite profile of national environmental stewardship based on a compilation of
21 indicators derived from 76 underlying datasets. The 2005 version of the ESI represents a significant update and improvement
on earlier versions; the country ESI scores or rankings should not be compared to earlier versions because of changes to the
methodology and underlying data. The index was unveiled at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, January 2005, Davos,
Switzerland. The 2005 ESI is a joint product of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the Columbia
University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum
(WEF) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission.
To create a comparative index of national-level environmental sustainability and to provide a mechanism for making environmental
management more
quantitative, empirically grounded and systematic.